Month: June 2020

Question For The Day

Today’s question is…

If you were suddenly given the ability to fully remove up to three character flaws from your life, which one(s) would you choose?

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step

Loneliness, Neediness, And High Maintenance, 3 Unwanted Character Flaws That Have Plagued My Entire Life…

You would think that after experiencing a pristine weather day and two wonderful meals I was treated to on my 48th birthday by two wonderful people, that I’d be driving home at the end of it feeling quite happy and joyful, yet I wasn’t. Rather, I was feeling three unwanted character flaws that have plagued my entire life.

What are those three things?

Loneliness, neediness, and high maintenance.

As a kid, I always felt lonely and that I didn’t matter. My needs were often overlooked due to living in an alcoholic home with two mentally and emotionally imbalanced parents. Alcohol and drugs became my only solution to deal with it for my late teenage and early adult years until they got out of control and forced me to stop them both. Once I did, thus began an arduous two and a half decades of constantly feeling a level of loneliness that’s led to so much neediness and high maintenance-based behaviors with anyone who have grown close to me.

After spending my childhood with such loneliness and no real deep connections to speak of, I’d cling to anyone who liked me and became a friend or partner to me, always seeking and wanting signs of love and attention from them, two things I never got much of as a kid. It was almost as if I kept trying to make up for what I didn’t get back then. This persistent seeking of love and attention unfortunately showed up as neediness. And the more I became needy, the more I became high maintenance as well.

Over the past 25 years, I’ve tried to change that by removing these unwanted character flaws through one therapist after another, through diligent work in 12 Step recovery programs, through work in The Mankind Project (MKP), through countless self-help and spiritual empowerment books, through prayer and meditation, through loving myself unconditionally, and well, through a vast number of other things too. Yet, those flaws have remained, except for a few key moments in my life, the biggest being after I spent ten days on a silent retreat. For about six months after that retreat, I felt embraced by something so amazing that those negative traits seemed to have disappeared. Unfortunately, they came back when that feeling of being embraced so deeply, suddenly wore off one day, landing me right back into that perpetual state of loneliness, neediness, and high maintenance.

I tried to do that retreat again almost a year later in the hopes to regain that feeling of being embraced, but wasn’t successful. I tried plenty of other things as well in the years that have passed since then right up to the present, yet have continued to remain unsuccessful. So, at the tail end of my birthday, this is what I was feeling and it was totally brought on by the sadness I felt over a close friend not calling or texting me on my birthday. For as much as that shouldn’t have affected me so greatly, it did.

This has indeed become the most frustrating part of my life. Feeling lonely, needy, and high maintenance all the time hasn’t made for much of a positive space for others to stick around in my life. That’s why I’ve begged God to help me feel more of God’s presence, and have tried more than you could ever imagine or suggest might help to make this happen, even going so far as meditating for hours a day at one point until I passed out from holding my breath too long, which ended only in me bruising my skull!!!

While I’ve had some pretty incredible friendships and relationships in my life who have stuck by my side even with me carrying these unwanted flaws, and while I’ve also seen and done so many amazing things in this world too, none have ever been able to remove my feeling of loneliness and because of it, it’s left me in this constant state of neediness and high maintenance.

For as many paths as I’ve gone down to rectify this, for as hard of work I’ve placed in my life to be free of these defects of character, and for as much money as I’ve spent on each of the ways people have suggested may help, I continue to carry the burden from each of them.

The positive news is that I don’t buy into there being some person, place, or thing in this world anymore that will ever fully be able to take these character flaws away for good. Even the best sex in a new love relationship will only ever temporarily abate it because I’ve experienced even that.

In the end, I believe the only way I’ll ever become free from loneliness, neediness, and high maintenance, is to feel the true unconditional love of God within me, which for the life of me, I continue to pray for every, single, day…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Silly Joke Friday

Silly Joke #1

A blonde and a lawyer are seated next to each other on a flight from LA to NY. The lawyer asks if she would like to play a fun game? The blonde, tired, just wants to take a nap, politely declines and rolls over to the window to catch a few winks. The lawyer persists and explains that the game is easy and a lot of fun. He explains, I ask you a question, and if you don’t know the answer, you pay me $5.00, and vise versa. Again, she declines and tries to get some sleep. The lawyer, now agitated, says, “Okay, if you don’t know the answer you pay me $5.00, and, if I don’t know the answer, I will pay you $500.00.” This catches the blonde’s attention and, figuring there will be no end to this torment unless she plays, agrees to the game. The lawyer asks the first question. “What’s the distance from the earth to the moon?” The blonde doesn’t say a word, reaches into her purse, pulls out a $5.00 bill and hands it to the lawyer. Okay says the lawyer, your turn. She asks the lawyer, “What goes up a hill with three legs and comes down with four legs?” The lawyer, puzzled, takes out his laptop computer and searches all his references, no answer. He taps into the air phone with his modem and searches the net and the library of congress, no answer. Frustrated, he sends e-mails to all his friends and coworkers, to no avail. After an hour, he wakes the blonde, and hands her $500.00. The blonde says, “Thank you,” and turns back to get some more sleep. The lawyer, who is more than a little miffed, wakes the blonde and asks, “Well, what’s the answer? “Without a word, the blonde reaches into her purse, hands the lawyer $5.00, and goes back to sleep.

Silly Joke #2

A man comes home from working at a pickle factory and he seems troubled. His wife asks him what’s wrong and the man says, “Oh, nothing. I just… well… recently I’ve had an uncontrollable urge to put my penis in the pickle slicer.” His wife nearly faints, then she blurts out: “Why? You need to go see someone. I’m going to make an appointment with a therapist or someone tomorrow.” The man protests, “No, no. It’s fine. Really. I’m not going to do it.” Everything is fine for a few weeks, but then the man comes home early from work and he’s pale as a ghost. His wife inquires, “What’s the matter? You look terrible!” The husband tells her, “Well, remember when I said I wanted to put my penis in the pickle slicer?” The wife gasps, “You did? What happened?” The man starts to cry. “I got fired!” “I don’t care about that! Are you okay? What happened with the pickle slicer?” The man sobs, “She got fired, too.”

Silly Joke #3

On their honeymoon, the new husband told his bride, “I have a confession to make that I should have made before, but I was concerned that it might affect our relationship.  “What is it?” his new bride asked lovingly. “I’m a golf fanatic,” he said. “I think about golf constantly. I’ll be out on the golf course every weekend, every holiday, and every chance I get.If it comes to a choice between your wishes and golf, golf will always win.” His new bride pondered this for a moment and said, “I thank you for your honesty. Now in the same spirit of honesty, I should tell you that I’ve concealed something about my own past that you should know about. The truth is, “I’m a hooker.” “No problem,” said her husband, “just widen your stance a little, and overlap your grip, and that should clear it right up.”

Bonus Silly Joke

A group of kindergartners were trying to become accustomed to the first grade. The biggest hurdle they faced was that the teacher insisted on no baby talk. “You need to use ‘big people’ words,” she’d always remind them. She asked Chris what he had done over the weekend. “I went to visit my Nana.” “No, you went to visit your GRANDMOTHER. Use big people words!” She then asked Mitchell what he had done. “I took a ride on a choo-choo.”  She said, “No, you took a ride on a TRAIN. Use big people words.” She then asked Bobby what he had done. “I read a book,” he replied. “That’s WONDERFUL!” the teacher said. “And what book did you read?” Bobby thought about it, then puffed out his little chest with great pride and said, “Winnie the Shit!”

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson