Core Beliefs Can Kill

I know I've been told this before, but I've only started to really hear it lately - that I am lovable and worthy of love, that I am not "bad" but "good," that I am not just a child of God but the "apple" of God's eye...

How can this be? I ask. One parent abandoned me and the other told me all the time that no one would ever love me, that I was ugly and mean, that I was just like the parent who left...

When you hear a recording over and over, you begin to believe it. Even when you know it isn't true, you believe it. Especially when the person saying it is your prime caretaker, your only caretaker...

Then when you're old enough and you get to be on your own, the world is a scary place. So you seek out people, places, and things that remind you of home - especially people who remind you all the time that you are not worthy, not lovable, and the rotten apple...

By the grace of God, somehow, I found my way into the rooms of Al-Anon. The first message I heard was that I didn't have to control others the way I had been controlled. After that, I spent the majority of my time looking at what I had done wrong and making my amends.

Now it is time to look at what I have done right, and to make amends to myself. For too long, I let the lie I was told be my truth. I've always compared myself to the alcoholic, thinking that I was much sicker, thinking that he is a great guy and I have no idea why he is with me...

But within the last two days, I heard a friend tell me that I am lovable, I heard another Al-Anon member greet me at my meeting with "Hi, Sweetie!" and I heard my niece and great-niece tell me that they love me. More importantly, I believed them!

I believed them! They have no reason to lie. I have nothing to offer them besides love back. Until now, this week, I've always suspected people who say they love me because my first experience hearing those words was from my parents...

My parents, who have never loved me, not even to the best of their ability. Some people just can't love. They are that sick. The kind of sick that is not fixable. There are such people. Even the Big Book speaks of those who can not be honest with themselves.

I am grateful that even though I thought I could never recover, never become lovable, and never love in return, I have a Higher Power who has gently, with the help of my sponsors, friends, and professionals, begun to erase, no, to eradicate this core belief - to kill it before it kills me.