Yes. I must admit it's getting better.

The most encouraging time in self-improvement is when you can actually see it, when you know the difference between how you were and how you now are, it being how you wanted to become.  Today I had an illustration of how much I have grown over time.

After my first girlfriend (who made it all the way up to fiancee) dropped me I met a number of women on line and had little to no success.  I then met a woman I will call Ellen.  She was what I thought at the time I wanted in a woman, by looks, by lifestyle, by attitude.  I struck up a conversation with her and we hit it off.

We had made plans to talk on line at one point via chat, but she did not appear at the designated time.  And I panicked.  Not a little bit.  A lot.  I had decided that she hated me and I had lost my only chance at happiness in the entire history of recorded time.  I tried to contact her via every means I possessed.  I was seriously freaking out.

Well, when I finally got in touch with her, she was not amused.  I was reeking with the abandonment and lovability fear that I now know is the result of being an ACoA.  She dropped me and never looked back and I thought this was just another in my hard luck world view going all the way back to "that dumb cartoon", which like "that stupid sign" will be the subject of a future essay.

Fast forward to today.  I have been talking to a woman I will call Kathy.  She is beginning to mean quite a lot to me.  On Friday night, I talked to her until the late hours.  On Saturday I took my granddaughter to the North Carolina State Fair.  Since I have met Kathy, we have been in fairly regular contact.  I would send her a text in the morning.  She would send me one.

Well, after it would be a reasonable time for her to be awake, I still had not heard from Kathy.  And that same old panicky feeling returned.  I did the normal things, including calling one time instead of texting and trying the home phone instead of the cell, in case the cell was lost.  Nothing.

And I was ready to go to the nut house.  Only now I knew what was kicking in.  From a purely fact base basis this woman liked me and if she was not available, there was a good reason.  I knew I was being irrational and I lifted up my fear to the Higher Power and went back having my day with my granddaughter.

Well, as we went to the Ferris wheel (a favorite ride of Kathy's as it turns out), there was a fun-house type of ride called Surf's Up.  I have, for reasons that do not entirely make sense, associated Kathy with Beach Boys music and so that prompted me to check my phone.  Kathy was alive and well and simply had forgotten her phone that morning.  I gleefully texted her that we were getting on the Ferris wheel and wishing she was there.

Was I still in a bad place as far as freaking out goes?  Yes.  But now I can handle it differently and see this as the beginning of the new me.  And I have ACA (and Kathy) to thank.

—§— 

Sir Paul again