BURN THE WITCH!

And other advice I get from my ego

Step 10: “Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”

I was laying in bed thinking about the good, the bad, and the fabulous that happened that day, when I came face-to-face with one of my deadliest frienenemies: my ego.

My ego is a fabulous bitch who wears designer shoes and a vintage Gucci sweater he found at a thrift store, because even though he’s vain as fuck, he also wants people to think of him as a conscious world savior.

My ego thinks he’s smarter than most and carries the burden of living in a world where most humans are average on their best day.

My ego has a hard time with kindness but wants people to believe Mother Teresa would look like a nice lady compared to his halo of goodness.

My ego is the set of stories I told myself as a child to survive in a world that was cruel and violent to a boy with weak constitution, poor health, and feminine manners.

My ego is the armor those stories became, the armor that carried me from a small town in Chile to the good life I have today.

My ego also made me an alcoholic, convincing me I was stronger than alcohol even though wine beat my ass over and over again for decades.

My ego is not all bad, though. That’s why we’re frienenemies and not just enemies. Thanks to him I have no body issues. For real, I don’t. I look at myself in the mirror and see a good-looking dude with an adorable smile and a body made for sin. A little ego—especially in that department—is not a bad thing.

Here is a good example. Recently, I attended a workshop for queer men that included a healing session where we all got naked and talked about the things we didn’t like about our bodies. I was entirely unprepared for this part of the workshop and straight-up lied. My lie was so lame everyone in the room immediately knew I was bullshitting and I think I’m hot shit. In case you’re curious, I said I hated my ears.

Lame, I know. Borderline insulting to the others in the room, but I am serious, I like my body with all its imperfections.

I’m not delusional. I don’t think I look like a magazine model, but I like myself—a lot. Sometimes too much, to be honest.

Am I the drama?

The night of my internal conflict, my ego and I were fighting about an interaction I’d had earlier. Someone disagreed with a decision I made—my decision to make—and chose to voice that disagreement publicly. I thought it was rude, and maybe it was, but the part that got me wasn’t the disagreement; it was the public part.

Before responding, I paused, like my sponsor taught me, and checked in with my higher power, but instead of listening to him, I heard my ego shouting: “BURN THE WITCH!” And when my ego says burn, I bring gasoline.

I sent a Molotov email that scorched the earth—Angela Bassett in Waiting to Exhale, walking away from a flaming car in slow motion style. Fabulous, iconic, and absolutely unhelpful.

One part of me insisted I was right to defend myself. The other part whispered that maybe I’d gone too far.

I was so troubled I did what Carrie Underwood did in 2005, I asked Jesus to take the wheel. I told him to wait until morning, though, because it was 10 PM and I’m not doing emotional labor past my bedtime.

If you’re wondering why this minor skirmish earned 24 hours of spiritual airtime, it’s because I take Step 10 seriously. The ritual of ending the day by examining my actions, and correcting the ones that need correcting, is a gift. Step 10 is healing, liberating and usually quite clear. That night, the line between “standing up for myself” and “being a bitch with a flamethrower” was blurry.

Venom

I wasn’t always this self-aware. I still remember the first time I purposely used words to burn someone to the ground. When I was 13, a bully called me a faggot in front of the whole class. I snapped back that I’d rather be a faggot than have a mom who was a whore who showed her tits for tips. She was a single mother and a waitress at a local bar. I hit him exactly where he lived.

He beat me up for talking shit about his mom, but he never messed with me again.

That was the first time I learned the intoxicating power of weaponized words. The first time I realized I could find the softest spot on someone and strike. Soon it became my specialty.

My best friend called me venenoso—venomous. I wore the title like a crown.

We’re taught to fight cruelty with cruelty, that trauma requires retaliation, that if someone wounds you, you wound them worse. An eye for an eye sounds like justice an it also feels good.

It is the same rush alcohol gave me: a hit of relief that eventually becomes poison.

Somewhere in the Middle

The morning after asking my higher power to do the hard work and give me an answer, I knew what I had to do. I had to talk to the person. Tell them honestly how their actions landed, and apologize for my overreaction.

The answer wasn’t about who was right, it was about truth; and the truth required revealing something I rarely admit: I am terrified of making an important mistake.

I give myself grace for everyday slip-ups, but when a decision affects others, when stakes are real, I want perfection. Being exposed publicly for a mistake hits old, old nerves.

That was a hard amend to make. Amends are not meant to be a “I’m sorry but…” they are just a straight I’m sorry, and while I was doing it my ego screamed at me to point out what they had done wrong “tell them that these things are meant to be discussed in private, tell them is shitty to let others know you made a mistake,” but I didn’t do that. I talked about my insecurity around making mistakes, and apologize for calling them -paraphrasing a little- “a back staving Jezebel sent to earth by satan himself to prey on the loving and pure,”

The amend went very well and it was exactly what was needed.

Ricardo:1

Ego: 0

My ego is not an evil dude, though. He was created to protect me, and he did a damn good job. But I don’t need him running the show anymore.

I’m okay now. I don’t need the venom. I don’t need the fire. I don’t need the armor.

I have to convince my ego that he can retire, he can relax. Maybe he can take a part-time job in my brain’s beauty department so I keep seeing the hot piece I see in the mirror.

Most nights, Step 10 is straightforward. Some nights, it’s the battleground where I remember who I was, who I am, and who I’m still becoming.