Anonymity

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The last time I felt like this . . .

February 16, 2011 in Forgivness, relationships, Resentment by Chris | No comments

The last time I felt like this I was headed for a relapse.  That is a terrifying thing to realize, but the last time I caught a resentment toward 12 step programs I wasn’t very far from heading out the door and over to my dealer’s house.  I’m nowhere near actually using or drinking.  I’ve even been able to keep the urge to smoke cigarettes in check.  That isn’t to say I’m not acting out but I haven’t acted in a way that can harm anyone except possibly me, and even that is doubtful.

I have given up my service commitment at my home group and don’t intend to go back there for awhile because I just don’t feel like I can be honest, even in a general way, and be safe.  I cannot rely on being anonymous there.  I certainly can’t be anonymous here.   I recognize that I am the one responsible for having ever had my real name attached to this blog and I am the one responsible for sharing it with people that I know.  I accept my part in that.  In 4 years though I haven’t had to monitor the comments for vicious, libelous, bigoted, and hateful statements.  It has been so bad that I shut down commenting for awhile and have decided that none will be published without my review.

People around here are always patting themselves on the back because, according to them, there are “so many meetings” around here.  I suppose they are right.  We have something like 200 a week.  After you subtract the smoking meetings and the women’s meetings (only because I’m a man) it is more like 100.  Take out the 10 PM and Midnight meetings and we’re down to 70.  I guess even that is alot, but I haven’t been to a meeting in quite a long time where I don’t know at least half the people there.   And I’m sorry, but AA is not a hotbed of mental health.  You know what?  In all the time I’ve been going to meetings I have never “hooked up” with anyone there and I just can’t believe how many people either try to fuck their way sober or simply fuck their way through the rooms.  I can’t believe how many people seem to have nothing to do except meddle in peoples lives and gossip.

I realized today that one of the people whom I feel so hurt by has always been a gossip.  She has told me how she feels about someone she sponsors.  She has told me how someone she knows feels about someone she sponsors.  She has told me the flaws in other people’s programs.  And through all of that it never occurred to me that she might turn around and say the same kind of stuff about me, or that she would say that kind of stuff to people who intend to harm me.  Never occurred to me.  I feel like such an idiot.

Here at the tail end of this really shitty month though I have had a couple of wonderful and deeply needed reminders that my staying on the path and that my sharing as honestly as I can is not meaningless.  I’ve been reminded that when I do this it occasionally generates some good in the world.  I am deeply, deeply grateful to Jonathan, Cody, and Stuart, three men I have never met, who reached out to me this week.  If it hadn’t been for you I may well have abandoned this and perhaps abandoned the path entirely.  Thank you guys for making a difference in my life.

Anyway, I know I’ll get through this.  I need to step back and pull focus back to the real thing; away from personal drama and back to recovery.  I know that I will have to find a way to forgive these people for my own sake.  I know there is a lesson about recovery in here somewhere.  I know I’m going to grow spiritually somehow.  I just want to know the lesson and be done growing now.

OK.  Enough ranting.  I’m going to go work on getting spiritually fit again.

Coming Home

January 8, 2011 in Acceptance, Justice, Perseverance by Chris | 1 comment

My mom completed her treatment and came home from Minnesota last night, and in spite of walking into a month of mail, an imminent divorce, and more, she seemed OK.  It was very late in the evening, and I could see as she went through the mail that she was becoming more and more distressed, her voice tightening and her hands trembling.  In the best situations coming home is a big deal.  She isn’t coming home to an ideal situation.

Home for me is in many ways the kind of emotional sobriety that I usually abide in.  Home is serenity, sanctuary, stability, safety.  Home is the place where I can be myself; where I don’t feel like I have to meet someone else’s expectations.  I haven’t been to my emotional and spiritual home since before my mom left to begin her journey there.  I need to be home and I have been working to get back there with a fervor and I have only just begun to get back there.

Mom coming home hasn’t really caused me to get back here.  Coming home has been the product of step work and prayer and honesty and it has been the product of how a Higher Power works in my life.  In spite all I have been angry about and hurt by, coming home, coming home to that place of acceptance and forgiveness, has helped me see that I’m free now from the noose I alone created.  It has been taken away, root and branch, and even though I occasionally snap back into believing that the memory of it is the thing itself, my conscience is clear.  And I am free now of the intense burden and stress that I have been bearing alone for so many months; I am free of it and yet I have kept my side of the street clean.

It is clear to me, also, that I could not solve this problem on my own, that without some work and some people with whom I am able to be honest, I might yet be trapped in an emotional landscape that is a continent away from where I belong.

Now that she is back in the dangerous location where she lives, I am hopeful that my mom can keep using what she has been shown in her own journey to her real home.

Promptly Admiting When I’m Wrong

July 14, 2010 in Perseverance by Chris | 7 comments

I hear people in meetings all the time say how they do a written 10th step every night.  Honestly, I cannot imagine doing that.  It’s hard enough to find time to do everything else that needs to be done.  But, written or not, I do regularly look back on my day, or my recent past, and look at my motives, and when I am able to, I try to make it right.

The thing is, now that I’ve been sober awhile, it is no longer the really obvious selfish choices that harm others that trip me up; it is the small, ambiguous details.

If I’m dating someone, or thinking of dating someone, when do I tell them about this blog?  Or do I tell them at all?  I can hardly keep some of the details of my past from them, but is it better to hold back on it or to up front with it.  And what if I suspect that I might actually like someone, and become afraid that my history will scare him away.  If I direct him to my story here then, am I not actually depriving him of the opportunity to get to know me, and then decide on his own what he wants to know?  Isn’t that a decision based on fear?

I did that recently.  I tried to scare someone off before he had the chance to decide for himself whether he wanted to be scared off or not.  I did it because I was afraid.  If I was going to be hurt I wanted it to be now instead of later, when it would hurt more.

If a person is curious it isn’t too hard to do a Google search, or go to a library and look in the card catalog for that matter.  There is more than one person with my name in the world, but even so, 8 of the first 10 Google results are me.  If a person wants to know they can.  The only reason for me to direct someone here is either for attention (which I wouldn’t rule out – some of my old stuff is pretty good) or I want to manipulate them into seeing me a particular way.

It’s a very fine line though, isn’t it?  Discerning our motives can be so subtle, and so easy to justify or deny.

A Spiritual Foundation

January 22, 2010 in Spirituality by Chris | 5 comments

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the value of anonymity.  I’m not altogether convinced that there really is such a thing; not in the absolute sense.  It exists in greater and lesser degrees and we see famous people straddle the line all the time.  In 12 step recovery we have secret code words and phrases that one can recognize easily as being part of this particular path, and in interviews those people will give themselves away by saying, “I had to admit I was powerless,” or “It’s just a one day at a time thing.”  Some notable people do it successfully.  Some don’t.  It seems the ones who don’t almost invariably end up being train wrecks again. Read the rest of this entry »

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