The other day my sponsor called me to ask if I wanted to start another step group so I agreeded. We had started one last year but never finished it do to a death in my sponsors family. She asked me if I was willing to take a cake for my 12 years of sobriety and I said I didn’t want to. I haven’t taken one since I gambled those few years ago. She told me I still haven’t forgiven myself obviously for the behavior relapse I had during that time I started gambling. I told her I guess not because even attending meetings where my ex husband and all the people I no makes me want to run for the hills. He had told most of the people we new in the recovery community what I had done. That made it so I felt really uncomfortable in most meetings in our town. My sponsor tried to tell me that over her 20 years she’s seen so many people mess up in many different ways and that I’m not the first to fall into gambling even with long term sobriety. She hopes that doing a new full set of steps will help me to fully forgive myself. I thought I had as best I could but if I’m being really honest with myself I still hate what happened everyday. The pushing myself every single day in a job thats literally killing my body when I could of used my momey I used gambling to change careers or even travel more eats at me. I try so hard to stay positive and push past the feels of anger at myself but it seems to creep back from time to time. I don’t no if the shame ever fully goes away but I no that I manage to pull myself through better. Inam rebuilding what I lost and it’s slow as hell but at least I have savings today. I’ve been saving since the day I quit gambking and every month it grows a little bit. I haven’t touched it once in 2 years. I guess that’s the part that makes me sad sometimes is to see what was once financial freedom become me desperately trying to repair that again. I hope that doing the steps again will help me fix that broken part in me.
