Gratitude, Freddie and Love

Some days, I am so filled with gratitude. My disease likes to pick at things. To always see the faults in the world around me. I only moved to this new city I'm in a week ago, but I feel so amazingly connected.

I drove and picked up a newcomer yesterday after someone from my new home group gave me a car to drive around.

The newcomer, I'll call him "Freddie" was in the toils of a rehab romance. At this point, I have seen this several times over. Boy meets girl, girl meets boy, boy meets boy, girl meets girl, and the priority that sobriety needs to survive goes out the window.

Freddie, like me, also recently moved here. For a girl he met in treatment a few weeks ago. He's in love with her because when they first met, she said he could come here and live with her.

The first time my sponsor asked me what the definition of love was, I had no clue. It was always centered around what the other person was doing for me. I've now come to understand that my definition of love is caring for someone else and asking nothing in return.

My sponsor loves me, I love my sponsees. Through these relationships I have learned to have a relationship with my partner, and with other people that I could never have before.

Freddie kept repeating that he didn't understande why the girl could keep saying that she loved him but could't be around him after his relapse. Likely, she has a good sponsor telling her to stay away.

My relationships have come a long way from getting my selfish sex needs met.

Today I am grateful for the ability to love.

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No.

No.

Is a complete sentence.  I learned this from my sponsor in early sobriety. 

"Do you want a drink?"

"No."

I don't have to further qualify.  I don't have to talk about the weather, or my terrible childhood, or my condition, or my shoes, or my fuel tank.

No.

I later this also applied to things that I didn't want to do.  I am not talking about suggestions.  These I follow to the best of my ability.  But I have to put my sobriety first.

"Do you want to go to a later meeting instead?"

"No."

"I know it will make you late for the meeting, but can't you just wait on me?"

"No."

As my sobriety has grown, so has my ability to say no.  I am a people pleaser to the core, and this tool has become so powerful to me.

AA has taught me to say yes to so many things, but it has also taught me to say no.

Time

Some of the first things I heard about time in AA:

Time doesn't mean anything.

Time moves slower in early sobriety.

Listen to old timers.

Time takes time.

One thing I do know, is that as I have better cultivated the ability to manage my time in AA, the rest of my life has gotten easier to organize. My sponsor taught me this.

If I am late to meetings all the time, or leaving early all the time, the same thing happens in the rest of my life. I'm late to work, and I can't sit still.

The more I prioritize AA, the easier it becomes for me to prioritize everything else.

As AA slips away, so does my life.

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Friendship and Hi

Hi, my name is "Ed" and I'm an alcoholic.

This identification helps remind me who I am. An old timer once told me to always look someone new in the eye as I said it, to remind me that it's an introduction, which it is.

I also practice, "Hi, my name is Ed." I put out my hand, smile, and ask someone where they are from. I try to steer clear of "How sober are you?" or "Do you have a sponsor?" in my initial conversation. In the book it says to speak to the new alcoholic of normal things first, THEN move to my drinking, then their alcoholism...but I digress.

I've learned the smiling and introducing myself in AA makes quick friends. The people that come up to me, new in a new city, are people I want to talk to.

I say this with new appreciation today. I'm continuing to have the experience of AA picking me up here in my new city, and loving me.

As I watched the basketball game last night with all of my new friends, smiling, and laughing, I thought how connected and safe I felt.

Connected and safe.
Connected and safe.
Connected and safe.

I never felt.

Drunk.

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Gazpacho and God

So i went for my health exam at my new job today. Phew! Glad that's over with. I became accustomed to how well they treated me in the employee health office at my last job. They knew that I'm in recovery.

More importantly, thet knew how special I am. My sponsor always says: Treat an alcoholic special he feels normal. Treat him normal he feels rejected.

Today I was treated like everyone else. Normal. Rejected.

They never closed a door during my questionnaires. People were walking all over the place. As I talked about my alcoholism, rehab, recovery, the girls in the front office right next door talked about recipes. Gazpacho as a matter of fact.

But I was able to smile and carry on the conversation without much difficulty. Some people I know, their sponsor suggests that they say their first AND last name when identifying at a meeting.

Most of the shame of my disease is gone. Except when it isn't.

Luckily today I had God with me. I can't imagine how it would have been any other way.

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Look around

Helping Others...

So I'm here in a new city.  And feeling like a newcomer.  Another guy I met moved here a year ago and told me he felt the same way.  Up and down and up and down.  And then somebody said it.  As a matter of fact, that guy.  The more people he helped the better he felt.  Sheesh!  That's like, always the solution.

So then I started reaching out.  And reaching out.  One guy feels that no one is friendly but then when people come around doesn't talk, and plays with his phone the whole time.  Another can't sleep but is also the first one to suggest going to go start watching a movie at midnight.  This one is speaking for his second time at a meeting and nervous. This one is starting to believe but isn't entirely convinced. 

I can help these guys.

I am them.

Wait, what was it I was worried about?

I forget.

Early Morning Obsession

So I'm up this morning, unable to sleep anymore.

Because I feel like a bum.

I'm in an apartment that I paid for, in a city because of a job at a very well known and respectable institution that still wants me even though I'm an alcoholic, on a trip that I paid for, using electricity that I paid for.  I have a service commitment in a city where I barely know anyone.  I have a washer and dryer and laundry detergent.

And I still feel like a bum.

This is my disease.

He talks to me, his name is the same as mine.

Seems creepy.

Wonder what God thinks of all this.

Time Traveler's Prayer

Dear God,

Please remind me today that I am not a time-traveler.  I do not know the future, and I cannot change the past.

Love,

We prepare ourselves for the adventure of a new life...

So I don't know how long I can keep this up but I will try. 

Things are going amazingly well with my arrival in Miami.

It started yesterday morning as I stared at the phone wondering if I was too busy to answer or not as a sponsee called.  I picked up.  He asked me what was wrong as I frantically scrambled around for the screwdriver in the trash I had thrown away, necessary to take the bed apart.  "I'll be right there."  From my sponsee, this man who when I first suggested he ask someone out for coffee, looked at me like he was going to kill me.

He came over, restoring order to me and my partner's increasingly panicked efforts to pack or throw away everything we own.  This again for me was an illustration, that helping others, even doing something as simple as answering the phone sometimes, leads to places that I would never dream of.

All along the way, thousands of tiny miracles have continued to occur. 

In embarking on my new adventure, I've been super paranoid about dropping out of AA, falling on the map, ending up homeless and then dead.  As a good alcoholic, homeless and dead easily happen in 2 leaps.

So when we first arrived in our new home, realizing that I accidentally left a suitcase in the airport didn't slow me down from going to the meeting I planned to go to.

The first meeting we went to was a Young People's meeting, and before I could think too much, I stood up for service.  Literally, I am now the service coordinator for Young People.  I barely know anyone, but as it turns out, this commitment is the best way to get to know people.

As it turns out, an important item that was in the suitcase I forgot was the air mattress we were going to sleep on.  Before I knew it though, I was being dropped off at our new home by the first guy who stuck out his hand at the meeting.  With an air mattress.  And blankets.  And sheets.  And pillows.  He even remembered to stop for us to get toilet paper and toothpaste.

Today, I have learned quickly that my new city, unlike my old city, is not very pedestrian friendly.  The car we're going to drive hasn't come yet, but again, as God is in charge and not me, we have plenty of help. 

AA, since we have arrived, has, exactly as has always been told to me, scooped me up and taken me EVERYWHERE I need to go.  As I started a little manly crying in the Target because the dollar priced bowls I was going to get were even in my favorite color, I was filled and overwhelmed with the sense of God taking care of me.

God put me here, and God is going to restore me to sanity, as soon as I let him.