Tolerance

So I've been reading a lot of blogs and literature lately on recovery...specifically recovery from alcoholism.  While I've gained a lot of insight and courage to take my own recovery in a different direction, what I've also learned is that I have one mean bitch down deep inside that has very little tolerance for some of the rhetoric I keep reading.  Whew!  That was hard to write - now let's see if I can decipher it.

It's just that my heart has been closed off to any real emotion (beyond that for my close friends and family) for so long that anytime I start to open it to the possibility that this AA stuff might actually work, I slam that door shut but good.  I just have no tolerance for the kumbaya of it all.  Is it something I should build a tolerance for like I did for alcohol (now THAT would be ironic)?  Or is it a result of watching people mock it for so long that I'm afraid if I open my heart I'll be mocked too?  Or worse yet, that the boxer in my head will jump back in the ring and begin to mock me and beat me up for actually feeling something as genuine as compassion and love for my fellow alcoholics.  Whoa!  That was insightful wasn't it. 

Then there's the time.  If I do this AA thing right, I'll have to commit time and energy to the process.  I'll have to give of myself to help others.  I'll have to actually go - in the rain, in the cold, when I'm sick, when I'm tired, hell - when I'm sick and tired.  I'm just not sure if I have that kind of energy.  I feel like I give and give and give and I'm not sure I've got anything left.  That's really odd because I've always had more than enough to give.  Told you there was a bitch down deep inside...

Lord I hope this gets easier...I'm really tired.