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 at myself for trying to predict the severity of a new threat I anticipated as a result of previous encounters with 'others' in our household. Even worse, revealing my stupidity redirected others to identifying what they believed to be the problem. Please see: Confessions
Because we were traumatized by events leading to the separation of my parents, and disoriented by endless moves and travel, I was suspicious of rivals to my Father and the sense of security I enjoyed in his household.
Admittedly, we were relieved of a complicated problem in the Islands, and able to avoid another the consequences of an accident that may have resulted from the same confusion and disorientation I've already described (I accidentally my best friend with a baseball bat).
However, because we left, I never found out what happened to him, and my anxiety was never resolved. I felt sheepish by his house, and it was right next to mine, so I wound up going to bed at 7:00 PM while the sun was still up, and being admonished to follow the Lord by the neighbor on the other side of our home. Gates of Repentance for the Days of Awe
See also: Self Examination
Though we don't always know what we've done, I was encouraged to identify the exact nature of my wrongs - to get to the bottom of my mistakes, and make amends.
Sobriety afforded me the opportunity to write things down.
But hacks to my work online, duress in my home, and disruptions and obstructions to my daily living require patience and persistence to learn to adapt to. 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 case.
(And anonymity has been forced by the theft of important papers, and the ambiguous use of my name, and locations.)
I realized this when I was a child too. 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.
And, I wasn't the only person in our neighborhood challenged during these years. Our neighbor discovered a man taking pictures of her in the Gas Station bathroom across the alley, but because I couldn't remember what happened after I was offended, we were in kind of bind.
To make matters worse, after being offended by the lewd act I largely ignored, psychologists I spoke to later realized that my sexual frustration resulted in nothing more than my efforts to have sex with my teddy bear, or spills on the carpet in another county, so this is not a story about another crime or another offense by misrepresentation; children are taken and exploited by ongoing crimes, one after another in order to prove that it happens to the naysayers.
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, and encountered problems that predated me. For example: My grandfather was a preacher from North Minneapolis who was also Missionary in China, and my father flew a Cutlass stationed on the USS Ticonderoga during the Korean Conflict. And, after my parents were married we were stationed in Germany during the reconstruction after WWII.
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 the questionable behavior of the other members of my family.
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 troubled region, I returned only to encounter a hate crime scene along the way.
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 indulgence 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 get something done, I realized that writing is essential, but I can't talk about it, even in places where I was encouraged to 'open up', and, I've been unwelcome in meetings that deal specifically with the problem. My life has been threatened by violence all over the city, and evidence of the crimes has been 'lost' or stolen. Ongoing efforts are compromised by poor healthcare and challenging access to the same, largely because the required reporting results in more hits for having done so, even if the crimes we deal with took place in childhood.
I understand the use of media was considered to be the problem originally, but our testimony has been denied, and obstructions to our claims prevent us from making use of our own. Interference has been so severe, that we don't have the time, or resources to review our own materials, and in some cases, they’ve literally been stolen from us. So why can't media be used to make a determination when our testimony has been denied? It's certainly better than dying of the contempt used to deny our claims.
We have to be persistent in these efforts, but responding to the conflicts and injuries of others as they happen has taught me more than working with my own. I wouldn't presume to work without a healthy knowledge about myself, but because I wasn't capable of apprehending the threats I encountered personally, others returned to address work I couldn't do, and that worked pretty well.
If what we've been taught isn't working, we need to work to find a better way. So far, we've learned to be rid of the anger and fear that causes the problems to take care of our basic needs. Without that, there can be no progress, but we've accomplished that goal by logging and reporting the results of our efforts, and the poverty and contempt used to keep us out of courtrooms, and denied the opportunity to defend ourselves leaves us no choice but to continue to log, gather evidence, and report.
When we don't know what others believe about us, and we live with their condemnation, the most useful work we can do is self examination. Let the negativity condemn itself, and rely on God.
Fortunately, I was blessed with the advantages of a more flexible, and potentialy unambiguous writing tool online with attributes, methods, and new ways to define terms that may seem antiquated today made possible by use of HTML and CSS. And, today, we can teach what was once considered forbidden knowledge by careful use of computer mediated language, and haptic sensibilities (pressure mediated controls over computers) rather than reactionary abuses of language. It does no good to try to distract others from their morbid curiosities, but it does help to show others how to approach a boundary by using a button or trigger to catapult the reader to another location. By adding a warning, or more information with indicators and tool tips, we can teach others how to use these tools to half the distance to the threshold, and improve our knowledge of the reasons for them rather than tresspass what has been forbidden.