|
Two years
|
|
On 1 April 2006 in the late afternoon I was out in the garden tilling and daydreaming when my father walked out and offered to buy me a six-pack of beer. That's about all I had going on at the time in my life. I allowed as how that was nice of him, and I said I'd run to the beer store and come right back.
"No," he said, "I'll ride with you."
I was forty-two years old, and I was struck by the fact that my father didn't trust me to go to the beer store and make it back with any predictability. I was overcome with this sudden realization that the only way I'd ever been able to survive the way I had was to make myself my father's pet and allow him to tend to my needs and bail me out when I made a mess of things. We had both become so accustomed to this reality that it seemed almost normal to both of us. I had constructed elaborate rationalizations for the course my life had taken. Most of the time I simply didn't think about the reality of it.
"I don't think I want to drink, dad."
I went inside and poured out the two beers that were in the refrigerator and changed clothes and went to a meeting in the little town of Weatherford, not far from the farm. It was a Saturday night, and there were about five old women sitting around the table. I recognized some of them, though it had been years since I had been there. I told them that I didn't believe this would work for me anymore, but that I didn't know what else to do. I stuck around.
Three or four days passed, and I began to feel better about it. I decided to drive into Dallas and hit a meeting at Lambda, where I had spent so much time in years past. Years ago I had told myself I wouldn't go back there, and that there was no point in making the attempt. But there was no bad feeling when I showed up there. I felt right at home. I began to drive over several times a week, even telling my dad that I was going to Weatherford and then heading to Dallas, an eighty-mile trip, to hit a meeting there. I was beginning to feel a certain degree of expectation about my life that I hadn't experienced in quite some time.
I asked a few people if they would work with me as a sponsor, but I was turned down for one reason or another. For twenty years I had come in and out, usually accruing a few months of dry time at most before devolving into a puddle of self-destruction and bitterness once again. I had become the bad example, the person people pointed to as a warning. That's no joke.
I finally asked George Stephenson if he would sponsor me. George didn't say yes, but he said I should meet with him at his home for a talk. I had known George since my early days with the group. He had been sober for decades, and he had been the treatment director at one of the facilities I'd been sent to by the courts back in the 90s. I trusted him completely, but I still wasn't sure if I would be able to remain sober and become useful in any real sense. We weren't close, but we had maintained a nodding, friendly acquaintance over the years, and we both knew quite a bit about each other. I talked to him about what my life was like, and I began to fall apart. That lasted an hour or so. He gave me some writing assignments and suggested we meet again in a week.
I continued to meet with George on a weekly basis for over a year. During that time he did what no other person had ever done for me, and something for which I will be eternally grateful. He took me all the way through the Twelve Steps of that process and gave me something I had never experienced before. Hope. Perhaps anyone could have done that, since my willingness was the trigger that made everything possible. But no one could have done it the way that George did.
I wrote letters and approached people in person to make amends. I began to pay off old debts, and I did extensive inventory of my relationships and began to develop new ways of behaving toward people in my life so that I could hopefully make right at least some of the damage I had created over the years.
I was beginning to feel true freedom from the tyranny of my impulses and emotional states, and I was becoming a co-creator in my own life with the order and organization of the universe. There developed a rhythm to my life that was sustaining, even when, as George would put it, I was "stirring up dust bunnies in my head". I had an Intercessor of sorts, and I began to experience real peace of mind.
I had moved away from my father and gone back to work at a company that had employed me back in the 90s. I had gotten a place of my own and given my father back his gas card and stopped taking money from him without paying it back. I was self-supporting through my own efforts. I made it to a year and began to sponsor other people myself. I really felt like I had something worthwhile to transmit to others for the first time in my life, and I fully expected not only my material circumstances, but my mind and behavior, to continue to improve with time. I was handed difficulties and felt no panic or need to run from them.
Toward the end of 2007 I began to experience some of the same old troubles that had afflicted me in the past. I was a bit scattered and casting about for a fix. I was encountering trouble from the same defects of character that had dogged me for years and years. This is nothing new, and I bided my time and figured some more work with George would help. Things were good, in spite of my misgivings about what lay ahead.
I talked to George about sitting down again and talking. We made plans to do that soon. All was well. George was not only a very spiritual man, he was also a trained therapist with years of experience in treating addiction. More importantly, he was my friend and had the ability to tether me back down to earth when I was spiraling off into orbit mentally. He would ignore my intellectual acrobatics and stay on point. Just knowing he was there was a great help, though I usually took it for granted.
George was kidnapped and murdered in early February 2008. For a couple of weeks, including his disappearance, the discovery of his body and capture of his killer, the various friends flying in from out of town and the eventual funeral, everything was rather suspended, and I was numb. All of us with whom George had worked gathered together and talked about his effect on our lives and how we should stay in touch and support one another, and we meant it at the time. But we were burnt out by the emotional rollercoaster of that period of time, and we have since retreated into our various corners and kept mostly to ourselves.
I've been off the rez the last couple of months, scattered and spinning my wheels. I still do those things that I've always done to sustain me, but I remain somewhat at a loss. I still wake every morning, turn on the coffeepot, piss and brush my teeth, make my bed and get down on my knees and pray. I then take a handful of pills for my heart and pour a cup of coffee and go into my study to write and read and meditate. I still give thanks every night and inquire what I may do to correct my errors, and I do that sincerely. I still meet with other people like myself, though not as frequently as perhaps I should, and I still stay in constant contact over the phone with friends who share that same road. I told the one remaining person I sponsor last Sunday that I was trying to fire myself from that job, and he said he wouldn't let me. I wasn't getting into drama. I just felt like I had very little to offer him. However, once we began to work on his list of amends I freely shared my experience, and we worked out a process for him to address those people and situations going forward. I was glad he had shown up, even though my phone was turned off and I was offline.
I signed up to chair the six p.m. meetings in April on Wednesdays, and that will anchor me a bit in place. I'm still not sure where I'm going, but I have that same urge to run off and live somewhere else, or get involved in some romantic adventure to distract me. I've done that before, with obvious results.
I'm grateful to be sober. I'm grateful for the time I had with George. I'm scattered, but I remain consistent with most of the things I've been doing these past two years. That is not a lot of time, but it is the longest I've been without a drink or a drug in almost twenty years. And it is the result of the first time in my life that I have surrendered completely to that process that carries me forward today.
|
|
|
|
