Saturday, July 4, 2015

Life caught up with me!

Having not written anything since January of 2014 I took a few minutes to scroll through a few of my prior posts.  I am not sure if I should be embarrassed, ashamed, or... No, I will feel none of those feelings that just rushed through my still sick mind.  Those words of yesterday were just that.  Today, life is different.  Well, not too much really.  I have another year sober under my belt which I am very grateful for.  But the demons that prompted me to finally put pen to paper have become all too real yet again.  My life has again become unmanageable. Careers and perceptions took the place of meetings and service work and that balance that I once thought that I had is now gone and so is my serenity. Knowing what comes next, I must make the changes, be the change, and beg for God's wisdom and mercy; Almost 4 years sober and I have hit another bottom.

I will not go into too much detail of how I got here.  I will keep it general like we are told to do when we first come to recovery. In 2013 I made a move to go back to school, leaving behind a strong recovery network that I was never able to really rebuild in the new place of residence.  I take full responsibility, but for whatever reason, I could never recreate what I once had where I got sober.  Then I started my own business and that drove my life 60 plus hours a week for over a year, pushing school out of the way as well as my recovery.  Add in another career move with some pretty heavy responsibility.  And just for fun my body decided  to get sick with migraine headaches lasting months on end leaving me on a  medical leave of absence from the new amazing job I had just landed causing a lot of fear and unanswered questions..  This sums up August of 2013 to June of 2015.

This afternoon I sat in a giant meeting at the International AA Convention in Atlanta alone and depressed. It was my second meeting of the day.  The first one had been a gratitude meeting.  As I sat there waiting for the "Singleness of Purpose" meeting to start, I finally realized how low I really felt.  My mom had mentioned to me in a conversation a few weeks ago that she felt like the alcoholism had crept back in.  At the time I disagreed, and blamed my low behavior on the medical stuff that was happening.  But when I sat there today waiting for that speaker, I could no longer hide from the truth, alone and broken yet again.  She was right.  My disease had come for me and I can no longer hide.   The speaker finally went on and I was paying attention as best I could.  He started to talk about questions we are asked at the doctor when we are sick, if we know our name, if we know the date, those kinds of things.  Then he said something about asking an alcoholic 4 questions.  Now remember, this is huge room with thousands of people, so I am paraphrasing here.  It was hard to hear.  But it was something like this. Do you have a sponsor? Do you have a home group?  What step are you currently working? And what is your service position?  It was at that moment I knew that I could only answer one of those questions.  I do have sponsor but we are not doing any step work right now.  And that is my fault.  I don't have a home group because I have not joined one.  Which also means I am not doing any service work?  Fuck acceptance.  There lie all the answers to my problems.  I have no network, I have no recovery community, and I am definitely not giving away what was so freely given to me.

In that moment something changed immediately. It was almost as if all this weight I have been carrying around just disappeared.  It was as if I could see all of my selfishness and self centered bullshit staring me in the face.  And I have been looking at it for a while now and I am tired of looking at it. I am tired of not being happy.  I am tired of being in this hole.  I mentioned the gratitude meeting from earlier in the day.  The speaker spoke of the word gifts. I began to think of all the gifts I had in my life but somewhere along the line they had all dulled for whatever reason, mostly my own insanity.  So I sat in that seat, that I had earned so many years ago and made another decision.  I made a decision to change, to change my perspective, and to change my willingness.  I must because this is not living and I cannot go on another day, another step this way.  If I am certain about anything and this lighter feeling I have now, if I do not follow through I will surely drink again.


God please help me know your will.

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