Post by Old Dragon (Al) on May 22, 2004 17:11:31 GMT 1
Posting on behalf of Rosie – his story continued…
In the Word of the Rose – part 3
Such was my childhood fear of the preacher that, as an adult, only rarely have I entered a church or chapel – but I do believe in something. Fate, nature, the natural way of things, perhaps? Whatever, there are times in my life that it has made its presence felt and reminded me that I am not in control, it is. The week following my visit to Mam with Linny was one of those times.
Nothing had been resolved but everything stirred up. I felt wretched. Lonely, isolated and depressed. Desperate too for a quick ‘fix’. By the Tuesday lunchtime I found myself searching the classified columns of the local paper and watched over my shoulder by a work colleague.
‘It’s not a dog you want, Rosie, but a woman,’ he said, took over the paper and began reading aloud from the lonely hearts pages.
He meant well but I don’t find it easy to write to or phone strangers, the thought of doing so to a woman… Well, I knew I couldn’t. A phone call about a dog for sale or free to a good home, I might manage – but there weren’t any that took my fancy. How could there be when the only one I wanted was Linny? After our walk together, the way she’d behaved and everything, I felt disloyal even looking at the others advertised in the paper.
Driving home from work to an empty house that evening I probably held up the traffic. I didn’t want to go home. Didn’t know what I wanted. Company - but not that of my close friends. They, I knew, would know something was wrong and, although not give me the third degree, still had ways of making me talk.
Pulling the car into a pub car park, I sat there staring at the steering wheel. It was over fifteen years since I’d had a drink. All that time and it never once bothered me - but suddenly I wanted one. Wanted it so badly that my knuckles turned white against the steering wheel as I gripped it and fate or whatever threw a terrifying thought into my head – after those years supposedly in recovery I had nothing more than ‘white knuckle sobriety’.
It was then the shakes set in. Fear of a type I can’t begin to describe. All the help and encouragement I’d been given to improve my self-confidence and belief in myself as a worthwhile person seemed to evaporate in those few minutes sat staring at my knuckles and when I finally managed to release the steering wheel my hands felt numb and useless.
An hour went past and spent sitting in the car in some sort of shocked state. It had been from that pub over fifteen years ago that I’d set out to my very first AA meeting. Back then I’d been in the habit of calling in for a couple of pints before heading home to face my wife and family after work. A little bracer for whatever chaos would lie ahead. A little company of sorts – and yes, I’d known then that the man who always singled me out to talk to wasn’t really looking for my friendship but for me to buy him a couple of drinks or to bum a few quid from.
On that particular occasion he was already well oiled and had been looking out for me. He’d needed a lift. His wife had given him an ultimatum. Either he quit drinking and went to AA or she was leaving him and taking the kids.
‘You’re my friend, you have to help me. There’s no one else,’ he’d said and thrust a crumpled piece of paper with details of where the meeting was into my hand – so I took him.
He was in a state, too. So bad that when we arrived at the church hall where the AA meeting was I had to help him out of the car and in through the door.
It’s hard to recall exactly what happened over those next few minutes because other people there, seeing the situation, came forward to help and introduced themselves by their first names. Next thing I knew I was sitting on a chair near the back of the room and someone was handing me a cup of tea. Chatting away quite happily to me too and like they knew me. All I’d said when asked was that my name was Geoff.
‘Is this your first meeting, Geoff?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s fine. We’re always delighted to welcome newcomers. You’re in the right place and the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.’
I had a desire for something, alright. For company, friendship, a sense of belonging somewhere – but a desire to stop drinking? I’d not really considered that. Me being me, I said nothing as usual. Just enjoyed this stranger’s warm welcome and thanked him when he offered to refill my teacup.
It’s hard to say how much I took in on that first occasion but enough certainly for me to agree to ‘keep coming back’, as my new friend suggested at the end of that meeting. For the first time in my life I felt as if I’d found somewhere that I really belonged. Stumbled on it by accident or by the design of whatever Higher Power it was that folk believe in and I left with some leaflets, a list of other AA meetings in the area and a feeling that I’d come home. I’d weighed over twenty-three stones when I walked into that meeting but felt like I floated out on air.
Sitting in the car after my white knuckled session, I knew I needed to go back to AA. To share what had happened and to get my life back on track. Those 12 Steps weren’t simply a way to stop drinking; they were a way of life. A programme for living and that could be applied to anything and everything that was wrong in my life. Perhaps I’d never reached the same stage with drink as the man I’d driven to his first AA meeting but it didn’t matter; emotionally I was well down that road to rock bottom and I’d no desire to start pouring drink down my neck again to deaden the pain. That much I knew was asking for trouble.
Someone was reading the 12 Steps aloud as I walked into the room and quietly sat down, trying not to disturb proceedings.
‘1 – We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.’
Me, I was powerless over so many things. Where people often saw me as a big, placid sort of bloke on the surface, I saw myself more like a duck. One paddling frantically under the surface and to stop myself being swept away or under by a strong current and drowned. So much in my life was unmanageable.
‘2 – Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.’
Yes, I was nuts and without whatever ‘Power’ had caused me to pull into that pub car park and take stock of myself that night, I’d probably have been well on the way to a full tank by then and with no idea of where that, in my present mental state, could have led? Yes, I believed in that Power. If it made things easier to call it God, fair enough.
‘3 – Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.’
This was a reminder to me to pay attention and trust that Power. To stop fighting and let go of so many things that, however much they seemed important to me, there was nothing I could do to change many of them. The only thing I could really change was me - and to do that I needed help. Guidance.
‘4 – Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.’
I’ve often heard people in recovery describe themselves as ‘a defect looking for a character’ and that I can identify with. The easy bit is seeing the defects but that is also the most frightening bit. I'd no self-esteem and was riddled with many negatives, trying to see any good in myself felt like the hardest thing in the world to do.
‘5 – Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.’
A flash of the preacher’s face and the beads of sweat pricked my face like those drops of spittle. Had I really been responsible for all the ill that befell my family as a child? Did it always follow that ‘sin begets sin’? That my eldest child had been conceived out of wedlock was no secret. That she probably wasn’t my natural child didn’t matter to me. It never had. Neither had I thought twice about marrying her mother, that when half the village lads were likely sweating over who’d put the village bike in the family way. Okay, so I’d admitted to something I hadn’t done for all the wrong reasons but I don’t regret that. How can I? All five of my kids are special to me and four would never have been born at all if it weren’t for that lie.
‘6 – Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7 – Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.’
Yes, I’d had enough. I wanted to change. I wanted the nightmares to stop and to put the past behind me. To learn to live my life on an even keel. To become assertive and not the largely passive, emotional wreck that my behaviour and attitude clearly dictated was my position in life.
‘8 – Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.’
My list seemed endless.
‘9 – Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.’
’10 – Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.’
‘11 – Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.’
‘12 – Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.’
If I’d needed further proof of being back in the right place, the first person to share that night was someone longer off the drink than me and, he too, had allowed emotional turmoil to get on top of him and had also come close to drinking on that instead of letting go and trusting that Higher Power to deal with things.
Somehow I had to emotionally detach from Linny and from my childhood if ever I was to make progress.
That night I dreamed of Linny. Saw her heading away up the mountainside to gather sheep and, intent on her work, not once did she glance back at me.
In the Word of the Rose – part 3
Such was my childhood fear of the preacher that, as an adult, only rarely have I entered a church or chapel – but I do believe in something. Fate, nature, the natural way of things, perhaps? Whatever, there are times in my life that it has made its presence felt and reminded me that I am not in control, it is. The week following my visit to Mam with Linny was one of those times.
Nothing had been resolved but everything stirred up. I felt wretched. Lonely, isolated and depressed. Desperate too for a quick ‘fix’. By the Tuesday lunchtime I found myself searching the classified columns of the local paper and watched over my shoulder by a work colleague.
‘It’s not a dog you want, Rosie, but a woman,’ he said, took over the paper and began reading aloud from the lonely hearts pages.
He meant well but I don’t find it easy to write to or phone strangers, the thought of doing so to a woman… Well, I knew I couldn’t. A phone call about a dog for sale or free to a good home, I might manage – but there weren’t any that took my fancy. How could there be when the only one I wanted was Linny? After our walk together, the way she’d behaved and everything, I felt disloyal even looking at the others advertised in the paper.
Driving home from work to an empty house that evening I probably held up the traffic. I didn’t want to go home. Didn’t know what I wanted. Company - but not that of my close friends. They, I knew, would know something was wrong and, although not give me the third degree, still had ways of making me talk.
Pulling the car into a pub car park, I sat there staring at the steering wheel. It was over fifteen years since I’d had a drink. All that time and it never once bothered me - but suddenly I wanted one. Wanted it so badly that my knuckles turned white against the steering wheel as I gripped it and fate or whatever threw a terrifying thought into my head – after those years supposedly in recovery I had nothing more than ‘white knuckle sobriety’.
It was then the shakes set in. Fear of a type I can’t begin to describe. All the help and encouragement I’d been given to improve my self-confidence and belief in myself as a worthwhile person seemed to evaporate in those few minutes sat staring at my knuckles and when I finally managed to release the steering wheel my hands felt numb and useless.
An hour went past and spent sitting in the car in some sort of shocked state. It had been from that pub over fifteen years ago that I’d set out to my very first AA meeting. Back then I’d been in the habit of calling in for a couple of pints before heading home to face my wife and family after work. A little bracer for whatever chaos would lie ahead. A little company of sorts – and yes, I’d known then that the man who always singled me out to talk to wasn’t really looking for my friendship but for me to buy him a couple of drinks or to bum a few quid from.
On that particular occasion he was already well oiled and had been looking out for me. He’d needed a lift. His wife had given him an ultimatum. Either he quit drinking and went to AA or she was leaving him and taking the kids.
‘You’re my friend, you have to help me. There’s no one else,’ he’d said and thrust a crumpled piece of paper with details of where the meeting was into my hand – so I took him.
He was in a state, too. So bad that when we arrived at the church hall where the AA meeting was I had to help him out of the car and in through the door.
It’s hard to recall exactly what happened over those next few minutes because other people there, seeing the situation, came forward to help and introduced themselves by their first names. Next thing I knew I was sitting on a chair near the back of the room and someone was handing me a cup of tea. Chatting away quite happily to me too and like they knew me. All I’d said when asked was that my name was Geoff.
‘Is this your first meeting, Geoff?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s fine. We’re always delighted to welcome newcomers. You’re in the right place and the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.’
I had a desire for something, alright. For company, friendship, a sense of belonging somewhere – but a desire to stop drinking? I’d not really considered that. Me being me, I said nothing as usual. Just enjoyed this stranger’s warm welcome and thanked him when he offered to refill my teacup.
It’s hard to say how much I took in on that first occasion but enough certainly for me to agree to ‘keep coming back’, as my new friend suggested at the end of that meeting. For the first time in my life I felt as if I’d found somewhere that I really belonged. Stumbled on it by accident or by the design of whatever Higher Power it was that folk believe in and I left with some leaflets, a list of other AA meetings in the area and a feeling that I’d come home. I’d weighed over twenty-three stones when I walked into that meeting but felt like I floated out on air.
Sitting in the car after my white knuckled session, I knew I needed to go back to AA. To share what had happened and to get my life back on track. Those 12 Steps weren’t simply a way to stop drinking; they were a way of life. A programme for living and that could be applied to anything and everything that was wrong in my life. Perhaps I’d never reached the same stage with drink as the man I’d driven to his first AA meeting but it didn’t matter; emotionally I was well down that road to rock bottom and I’d no desire to start pouring drink down my neck again to deaden the pain. That much I knew was asking for trouble.
Someone was reading the 12 Steps aloud as I walked into the room and quietly sat down, trying not to disturb proceedings.
‘1 – We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.’
Me, I was powerless over so many things. Where people often saw me as a big, placid sort of bloke on the surface, I saw myself more like a duck. One paddling frantically under the surface and to stop myself being swept away or under by a strong current and drowned. So much in my life was unmanageable.
‘2 – Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.’
Yes, I was nuts and without whatever ‘Power’ had caused me to pull into that pub car park and take stock of myself that night, I’d probably have been well on the way to a full tank by then and with no idea of where that, in my present mental state, could have led? Yes, I believed in that Power. If it made things easier to call it God, fair enough.
‘3 – Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.’
This was a reminder to me to pay attention and trust that Power. To stop fighting and let go of so many things that, however much they seemed important to me, there was nothing I could do to change many of them. The only thing I could really change was me - and to do that I needed help. Guidance.
‘4 – Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.’
I’ve often heard people in recovery describe themselves as ‘a defect looking for a character’ and that I can identify with. The easy bit is seeing the defects but that is also the most frightening bit. I'd no self-esteem and was riddled with many negatives, trying to see any good in myself felt like the hardest thing in the world to do.
‘5 – Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.’
A flash of the preacher’s face and the beads of sweat pricked my face like those drops of spittle. Had I really been responsible for all the ill that befell my family as a child? Did it always follow that ‘sin begets sin’? That my eldest child had been conceived out of wedlock was no secret. That she probably wasn’t my natural child didn’t matter to me. It never had. Neither had I thought twice about marrying her mother, that when half the village lads were likely sweating over who’d put the village bike in the family way. Okay, so I’d admitted to something I hadn’t done for all the wrong reasons but I don’t regret that. How can I? All five of my kids are special to me and four would never have been born at all if it weren’t for that lie.
‘6 – Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7 – Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.’
Yes, I’d had enough. I wanted to change. I wanted the nightmares to stop and to put the past behind me. To learn to live my life on an even keel. To become assertive and not the largely passive, emotional wreck that my behaviour and attitude clearly dictated was my position in life.
‘8 – Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.’
My list seemed endless.
‘9 – Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.’
’10 – Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.’
‘11 – Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.’
‘12 – Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.’
If I’d needed further proof of being back in the right place, the first person to share that night was someone longer off the drink than me and, he too, had allowed emotional turmoil to get on top of him and had also come close to drinking on that instead of letting go and trusting that Higher Power to deal with things.
Somehow I had to emotionally detach from Linny and from my childhood if ever I was to make progress.
That night I dreamed of Linny. Saw her heading away up the mountainside to gather sheep and, intent on her work, not once did she glance back at me.