What's My Part?

That was the topic of the meeting I attended last night. It was fascinating to hear just how many of us in Al-Anon have tolerated behavior that would have sent your average non-co-dependent person down the road in short order.

I tolerated sustained verbal and emotional abuse from my first husband, and the reason for this could be ascribed to my childhood, to a stubborn desire to make it work, to any number of factors; it's irrelevent, really - I did, and it caused the both of us years of wretchedness.

This is diametrically opposed to the way I viewed that relationship before program - back then, it was all his fault, end of discussion. He drank - we suffered; I was an innocent bystander.

It was a long, hard haul uphill, to get my mind open far enough to even begin to consider that perhaps my own behavior left something to be desired. Blaming him for my torment might be satisfying in a nasty way, but didn't help either of us.

I was resistant to Step 5, with a mulish disregard for any suggestion that it could be an admission to a different way of life - a life which offered more than survival and my ever-present longing to be anywhere else but where I was.

"Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs."

Admitting it to myself was the most exacting skirmish - my ego was a small quivering thing cowering behind impressive defenses. I had years of rationalisations and justifications to fight my way through - I'm reminded of the time my husband was out behind our house cutting down a blackberry thicket with a machete, hacking and clearing for hours, just to get down to bare earth. At that point,  I thought he was finished, but he laughed, and said he was just getting started, and the worst work lay ahead - digging up and discarding the foundations of the plant, those impressive roots which spread in every direction, and colonise all gardens they reach.

Just so did my character defects contaminate all areas of my life - resentment and self-pity, rigidity of thought, impatience; the list of my wrongs seems endless some days. I once had a shared laughing fit with my sponsor, when I called looking for some commiseration, and she asked, "Self-pity not doing it for you, then?" in her crisp English accent. (She had a very clear grasp of the difference between giving comfort, and helping me to wallow.)

Once I could admit my failings to myself, admitting them to God came easily, but it was another titanic struggle to admit them to "another human being."

I didn't want to admit to my faults, they were mine, and I was deeply ashamed of them. My sponsor asked, did I think I could list off some of her character defects? I wriggled and squirmed, but was finally pinned down to an embarassed "Perhaps."  She went on to ask if that were the case, did the opposite apply, could she perhaps list some of mine?

That simple question left me speechless. Of course she could, she knew me better than I knew myself, at that point. I wanted to know what the point of all this was, in that case; why was I having to tell her what she already knew?

Why? Because it forces me to be honest, and it keeps me humble. Step 5 permits me to see myself without shame, and without grandiosity - as a perfectly acceptable human being with all the usual attendant human frailties. It allows me to feel comfortable within my skin, Al-Anon, and the world at large. I'm no longer possessed of the sneaking feeling that I'm trying to hide some horrific personality trait, and could be discovered at any moment. I can laugh at myself, and that is a blessing of glorious proportions.

Taking A Moment.

In my daily round, kindness to others is a worthy objective. I don't have to allow my boundaries to be trampled when practising kindness. Some days, it's just taking the time to dash off a quick reply to an email. I know how I feel when I write to a friend, and receive no response; it's rather like shouting into the void. Why is it that ignoring someone in person isn't acceptable, but ignoring them by email is?

I can tell myself that I'm too tired, I'm too busy, I have too many other things to achieve today, but those are justifications. I had a back-and-forth email the other day, and realised by their reply to my short response that I'd caused hurt feelings - I wasn't warm enough.  I'm not suggesting that we are responsible for other people's feelings, I'm clear on that not being the case. What I'm referring to, is all the ways we excuse being sharp, or abrupt, or just not bothering, under the guise of "busy." Am I truly too busy to take a moment to share some kindness, and some human warmth? If that is the case, perhaps I need to adjust my priorities.

I pray to be a person who is loving and warm even when I'm feelish rushed or pressured, or just fatigued.  When I take a moment to connect with someone, I am always grateful that I did - the smile on their face, or the tone of their reply, proves to me once again that giving kindness away restores my own energy and cheerfulness - it's a never-ending supply, fed by my Higher Power.

That's the selfish reason for doing it. The unselfish, is all those who have shared their experience strength and hope with me, over the time I've been in Al-Anon, believing that as they gave to me, I'd give to others.

One older lady, who'd been in program forever,  always concluded a phone call with, "Now, dear, nice talking to you, and remember to pay it forward!"

Inventories.

"Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves."

This can seem a daunting prospect; it was for me. Apart from my rage and resentment towards the alcholic, and my belief that all roads led straight back to him and his drinking, was my hidden, secret fear that an inventory of myself would reveal horrors the like of which skirted my dreams at night.

I felt resentful at any suggestion that I wasn't perfect as is, that I might have a part in my own misery, that I needed to swivel my focus from the poor sodden drinker to the mirror, and take a good hard look at myself and my own behavior patterns.

I've learned to use resentment as a touchstone; when that's my predominant feeling in a situation, it's an excellent indicator that my own character defects are running at high tide. I don't become resentful unless I'm already feeling guilty. I'm not feeling guilty unless I know I'm behaving with less program than I could. (Not should, could. Al-Anon teaches us not to try changing our conduct through shaming and restrictions, but to choose better behavior as a path to enlightenment and serenity.)

There are no "musts" in Al-Anon; we are each given the room and the freedom to practise this program as much, or as little, as we see fit. No-one will sit at the table with us, take notes, and declare us wanting. We are part of the fellowship to whatever degree we choose. In the same way, we will have whatever relationship with whatever Higher Power we embrace.

I've had periods of great movement and change, when I've been driven by stong desire not to be that same unhappy person I once was, and I've had times where I've just been coasting on fumes. I try not to judge the one by the other, but to accept both as the natural ebb and flow, without fear. I'm moving forward steadily - I can see that when I glance back over my shoulder to see my last resting place. But I don't want to become complacent, or self-satisfied.

Regular inventories of myself keep me honest, and help me to understand my character, my choices, and my motives.

Decision-Making.

I once was the sort of person who made snap judgements, then hasty decsions based upon those judgements. I'd spend 2 hours in a fabric store, finding the perfect material to make myself an article of clothing, yet major, life-altering choices were often made while I was in the grip of confusion, despair, or panic.

I could project entire conversations with the alcoholic inside my head, complete with my witty and slicing comments, (the kind I never make in real life because I can't think of them quickly enough) but I couldn't project myself far enough into the future to be able to discern the possible end results of a choice made today.

Because I felt as though I had few or no choices, I would flail about, trying to get my needs and wants met. More often than not, I was merrily leaping from the frying pan into the fire. And then I could spend my time roasting away in the flames, wishing I'd looked over the rim of the pan before I threw myself out.

A marvellous outcome of practising the Twelve Steps is that I don't do that anymore. I took Step Three:

"Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him."

I don't make choices based upon panic, resentment, anger, or frustration nowadays. I think about them for a while first, then I talk to my sponsor, and reason things out with her. If she can't help me with that particular area, I go to another Al-Anon member, and reason things out with them. I pray for guidance. I pray for more guidance. I pray for a sign to let me know I'm on the right track.

Sometimes, I must let go of it, accept it isn't happening on my time, but God's, and practise patience (not a trait I'm oversupplied with, unfortunately.) I used to hate waiting, because I just could not let go; I obsessed. I'm getting much better at letting go, because I've had many experiences demonstrating that my Higher Power has a plan I am unable to perceive at this stage of the process. Time and again, my chosen path will be completely blocked off - I can try going around either side, only to discover them both solidly sealed off to me.

That's an indication to me that I'm not heading in the right direction. I need to stop, sit down, take a break, look around, and see if I can see another avenue opening. Maybe I'm meant to just wait and think for a while; I've learned that isn't the waste of time I used to consider it. I don't have that force of desperation driving me to do something, anything, just to be in motion. I'm not treading water frantically, because I fear if I stop for a second I will drown; I'm floating - my faith makes me buoyant.

Step Two.

"Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."

My understanding of this Step, as with so much of Al-Anon, continues to evolve. I began with a vague idea that this power greater than myself would do the Creator thing of waving a magic wand, and bing! I'd be sane, and wouldn't that be nice.

Since I wasn't sure I'd ever been sane to begin with, when I gazed down that thought path, it sort of faded away into the mist. I liked the idea of being "restored to sanity" but I wasn't sure what that would look or feel like - I felt I'd been bonkers in one way or another for my entire life, and I didn't want to go back to any of my previous states of mind, so where was I going to end up, sane? How would I recognise it? Would I be able to maintain it, or was it a now-you-see-it, now-you-don't sort of thing?

I definitely preferred the concept of sanity as being something I was awarded, rather than something requiring much effort on my part, but that's not how it has worked for me. I've had delicious moments of clarity that I know were God handing me knowledge on a plate, complete with silverware, napkin, and instructions.

Those moments are a precious gift, and I'd love to have more of them, but most of it has been work, of varying degrees of effort. Some has been fairly simple - if I want result B, I must take action A. Some has been a hard slog, shoving my way through my own confused belief systems, searching for some tiny area of clear ground on which to stand, so I could begin the clean-up,  shovelling it all into the dumpster marked "Old Attitudes," getting it into a sort of central clearing room, to be gone over at a later date with my sponsor.

I've had to truly, deeply, passionately desire change - when I have been half-hearted, so has my new sanity been half-hearted: moments of clarity in the mud and murk, but on the whole, not much different.

Only when I've wanted it badly enough, and been imbued with determination to achieve it, has the sanity become less of a shadowy figure haunting the backdrop of my days, and more of a rock solidly planted in the foreground, around which all else is happily arranged. My own personal focal point.

You Can't Control Other People.

When I was in my first marriage, and very new to Al-Anon. I might have given lip service to that idea, but in my deepest heart, I still had the belief that if I could just find the right words to get through to him, he'd hear me, and quit drinking.

I must have been exhausting to live with, always at him about it, nattering and nagging and bitching and complaining and manipulating...all to no avail. I was a raving lunatic, and so was he. Before Al-Anon, I'd imagined the two of us to be preoccupied with different ends, but they were the same - both of us were completely obsessed with alcohol.

Step One is always there for me to take, and it works wtih such beautiful simplicity: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

My own efforts to manage, direct, and control, were precisely what worked to make my life unmanageable. The harder I tried, the less it worked. That's the part I couldn't get for so long - that I had to let go first.

I have an obsessive sponsee who continues to ask how to let go? I have the same response every time: "Think of something else. Force your mind up and out of that rut, and think of something else."

My first sponsor used to say that to me, and I'd feel frustrated and irritated; I wanted something that would be truly helpful to me, not some simple suggestion along those lines. I hadn't ever tried to put her suggestion into practise, mind you, but I knew it wouldn't work. Until the first time I was so desperate that I actually tried, and discovered to my delight that it did.

I paid much closer attention after that.

Online Again At Last.

Trying to get our landline phone, and internet services hooked up here, was an exercise in dedication, tolerance, patience, and forebearance. The provider we use has a firewall of "customer service representatives" who are nothing of the kind. Over a 3-day period, various of these individuals insisted it would be hooked up "sometime today" (it wasn't) "in two hours" (not) "in one hour" (no) "soon" (fat chance)  until I swear I could feel my blood pressure  rising to dangerous, blow-your-eyeballs-right-out-of-your-head levels.

I spent hours on the cell phone, wearing down the battery, attempting to break through to an employee who might actually be able to help me, and only managed this by calling the Complaints Department for a second time.  The first time, I was transferred from Complaints to Technical, back to Complaints, to somewhere unspecified, and then, over my loud wails of "NO NO NOOOOOOOOOOO!" back to the place I'd first started - Customer Service, where a new person promised that my service would be activated in an hour, offered to stay on the line with me while I waited, and then promptly disconnected me.

I took in a few deep breaths, laid my head down upon my kitchen table, and with my voice somewhat muffled by the placemat, asked my spouse, "Can I please beat the phone to death with a sledgehammer?" They suggested that might be counter-productive, then offered me in quick succession: coffee, a square of chocolate, and a happily wiggling dog.

Refreshed and renewed, I bent once more to my task, and called Complaints for the second time. Luck was with me, and I reached a person who was wonderful - cheerful, no-nonsense, and quickly able to discover for me that there was a break in the line at my end. (So all those promises of the service being hooked up within an hour or two were arrant nonsense, it was impossible.) He explained that the competition will often cut the lines when they disconnect the services; this proved to be the case, when the repairman came today and worked his magic. The repairman was another friendly, helpful man, who removed my ancient modem and set me up with a wireless connection, all at no extra charge, because of the hassle I'd been through.

We were talking last night, about the fact that because of Al-Anon, the moment I hung up with a timeframe for the repair guy to appear at our door, I'd been able to completely let go of any feelings of annoyance or frustration. I had a solution, so I could let it go, and enjoy my day.

We still don't have cable yet, but I'm saving that phone call for tommorow.

I went to an Al-Anon meeting last night, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The topic was "Alcoholism is a disease." There were about a dozen women at the table, and the sharing was varied. Everything from members who have a fairly good grasp of detachment, to those who are just beginning to grasp the concept, and still struggling quite a bit. I was too shy to speak, (hard to believe, right?) but hope I never lose my sense of awe at being able to go to a new place, find a meeting, attend it, and feel right at home. I felt so grateful for the honesty, and the sharing.
Now, I'm exhausted, more tomorrow.