Little Match Girl

I have had a “Little Match Girl” feeling for a long, long time. An alcoholic family, fear of not being loved, and social class issues swirled together with my own addictions and fears led to a bad case of always feeling on the outside looking in and way too much comparing my insides to other people’s outsides.

The rooms of AA are a great corrective. I get to hear about the insides of people and I get to see the disconnect between insides and outsides.

Yesterday I was telling folks in my home group about my current fears and how intimidated I am by someone at work and they all gave me that long look and said, “But you look so together, so competent and never scared.”

Outside looking in. Appearances are not reality.

But I was telling another friend about my ultimate fear and the way one scary thought can race down the hill taking me all the way to homelessness in three seconds. “It’s the bag lady thing” I told her. Someone doesn’t like me and in seconds my head convinces me that I’ll be a bag lady. Well, she said, A bag lady is just the little match girl, but grown up. Huh.