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250 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2022
- “If I drop my game, my Chandler, and show you who I really am, you might notice me, but worse, you might notice me and leave me. And I can’t have that. I won’t survive that.”
- “I was so often just a tourist in sobriety.”
- “For a long time, I tried to find just about anything and anybody to blame for the mess I kept finding myself in.”
- “You can consider what you’re about to read to be a message from the beyond, my beyond.”
“It is very odd to live in a world where if you died, it would shock people but surprise no one.”
“I think you actually have to have all of your dreams come true to realize they are the wrong dreams.”
———
“Addiction is like the Joker. It just wants to see the whole world burn.”
“But addiction wakes up before you do, and it wants you alone. Alcoholism will win every time. As soon as you raise your hand and say, “I’m having a problem,” alcohol sneers, You’re gonna say something about it? Fine, I’ll go away for a while. But I’ll be back. It never goes away for good.”
“You can’t give away something you do not have. And most of the time I have these nagging thoughts: I’m not enough, I don’t matter, I am too needy. These thoughts make me uncomfortable. I need love, but I don’t trust it. If I drop my game, my Chandler, and show you who I really am, you might notice me, but worse, you might notice me and leave me. And I can’t have that. I won’t survive that. Not anymore. It will turn me into a speck of dust and annihilate me.”
“I remember thinking, Man, no one taught me the rules of life. I was a complete mess of a person—selfish and narcissistic. Everything had to be about me, and I matched that with a really handy inferiority complex, an almost fatal combo. I was all about myself from the time I was ten years old, from that moment when I looked around and said, It’s every man for himself. I had to be so focused on me just to keep myself together.
But AA will teach you this is no way to live.”
“I don’t believe in half-assing things anymore. The path of least resistance is boring, and scars are interesting—they tell an honest story, and they are proof that a battle was fought, and in my case, hard-won.
I have many scars now.”