10.30.08
We’re all alone. Except when we’re not.
It didn’t matter who I was with, how many people were there, what brought us together. It didn’t matter, because I was still alone. Always. They just didn’t get it. How could they? If you gathered up a bunch of men, would you expect them to know what it’s like to be pregnant? They might have some “book learning” about it, or know someone who has experienced it, but they couldn’t really understand it.
But when I go to a twelve-step meeting, I know I’m with “my” people. Sure, there are differences, but we’re all there because we know how it feels to be powerless, and how it feels to think you’re alone.
I remember, early in recovery, I was feeling completely crappy, mostly because (I think), I had taken the drinking out of my life, but hadn’t added much of anything (except meetings) to replace it. I was sitting at a table in the public library, and felt someone, walking behind me, run their hand across my shoulders. Weird. I turned to look, at it was someone I had seen at several meetings. I didn’t know her name, we’d never spoken, I don’t even know if I’d ever heard her talk at a meeting. She smiled and kept walking. And all of a sudden I wasn’t alone.
10.01.08
Egomaniac mostly. Oh, and inferiority complex too.
An egomaniac with an inferiority complex.
Of all the (many many) saying of twelve-step recovery, this is the one that whacked me most precisely with the two-by-four of “I belong here.”
I am wonderful. I am funny and brilliant and suave and a fine conversationalist. I can hold my own against just about anybody. I can handle whatever life (or my boss) throws at me. I just need, you know, a couple of drinks to get me started, loosen me up, whatever.
I am a piece of shit. Any second now someone is going to tap me on the shoulder and say “what the hell do you think you’re doing and who do you think you’re fooling?” I can’t get out of my own way. Everything I touch turns to ashes. But if I could just get, you know, a couple of drinks, I’d find a way to relax, pull myself together, say something clever, make you like me just a little, survive another day.
So now, without, you know, a couple of drinks to alter me, there are days when I remember that, although I have some fine qualities, I’m not Uberman. And although I have my faults, as long as I think about what’s important and put effort into doing what’s right, I’ve done what I can do to help the people who matter to me recognize my worth. (The convoluted nature of that sentence is entirely the fault of that other AA concept, letting go of the outcome. Which is a topic for another time.)
