A Hot Mess

When I start to think everything else is the problem, it usually isn’t everything else. It’s me.

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. Proverbs 4:23

Last night our Internet went out. It had been having sporadic problems for a few weeks, and usually I have to reboot everything. It is annoying, but eventually it comes back online. This time it didn’t work. I started troubleshooting, which is difficult when the thing you need to troubleshoot with is the Internet that isn’t working. Eventually I contacted customer support and found out there was routine maintenance in our neighborhood and the service would be down for about eight hours. That really irritated me because nighttime is when I usually do my writing. I didn’t like the answers I was getting, and I vented my frustration to them for several minutes before finally going to bed. The next morning the Internet was back, so I opened my laptop to write. Then it went out again. Now I was angry. Support told me there was an outage. I knew there was an outage. What I wanted to know was why. Why now? Why during my writing time? Don’t they know how important I am?

After I collected myself, I started asking a different question. Why was I so upset? The truth was, I didn’t even need the Internet to write. Everything I needed was already on my laptop. And if I did need to get online, I could use the hotspot on my phone. But that wasn’t the point. It was the principle. I was paying for something and I wasn’t getting it. I wasn’t getting what was rightfully mine, what I deserved. As I thought more about that, I realized this wasn’t just about the Internet. Lately, things that normally wouldn’t bother me at all were really upsetting me. Drivers riding my bumper irritated me. Unhappy clients at work irritated me. Employees who wouldn’t accept responsibility irritated me. It seemed like everybody around me had suddenly become more difficult. That is when I saw it. Something my sponsor has told me often: if everybody else is the problem, then maybe the problem isn’t everybody else. Maybe the problem is me. I am the common denominator.

HALT suddenly came to mind, a common recovery acronym reminding me not to become too Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. The answer surprised me, although it probably shouldn’t have. I was in the middle of fourteen straight days of working twelve to fourteen hours a day. I wasn’t eating properly, so I was hungry. My body was exhausted, so I was tired. I barely saw my family except in passing between work and sleep, so I was lonely. And all of those things were making me irritable and easily provoked. I was a hot mess. The Internet outage didn’t create what was going on inside me. It exposed it. I started troubleshooting my Internet problem and discovered that the Internet was not the only thing down. I was too.

I got some rest, ate a healthy meal, spent a little time with my family, and I felt less angry. HALT doesn’t mean everything around me is okay. The rude driver may really be rude. The client may really be unreasonable. The Internet may really be down when I am paying for it to work. But when everything around me starts bothering me, I am learning to pause, stop looking at everybody else, and check myself. Am I Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired? If I identify even one of these, I need to address it. And when I do, I often find that the serenity I seek isn’t far off. If I honestly look at my part and take care of what is going on inside me, everything around me doesn’t seem to bother me as much. I can truly find peace in the midst of chaos. And that is the gift of recovery for me.

Prayer

Lord, help me recognize what is going on inside me before I react to everything going on around me. Help me take care of the things I can change and trust You with the things I can’t. Amen