A Dozen Steps

Dear Diary

by Mark on October 21st, 2007

Well, I thought about it and I guess I’ve done this a bit more lately. But, (bs?) my motive has remained the same so perhaps it isn’t a bad thing :) Personal stuff…

First Things First - Comcast (though it doesn’t seem to have made the news) suffered a serious, nationwide outage in the last couple of days and it became extremely frustrating not being able to complete any writings. Trying not to speak too soon (another character defect of mine) this morning, Comcast seems to be back. Phew…

My newest ex. seems to have decided for herself exactly what the problem was between us. Sadly, it doesn’t coincide with the reason I moved out. I am practicing restraint of tongue and pen and have been 100% successful currently. In the past, silence had been completely out of the question in similar situations. It gets better…

The 54th Georgia Pre-Paid Convention closes today and we were able to make a full day of it yesterday.

I had an opportunity to offer my thanks to someone who was an enormous help to me over 14 years ago…

And now he has also lived through the exact same scenario in his life, there are no coincidences.

In my third year sober, my divorce, the end of my 22 year marriage to Barbara, began. During 1992-93 someone gave me an audio tape of this “Sean A.” from California and I related with him immensely, right down to the “if I ignore something long enough it will go away” that he spoke of growing up in his childhood. Carrying Sean’s tape with me and listening over and over, a good deal of my early sobriety formed around his experiences.

Strangely, I hadn’t really given much thought to last night’s speaker during the day. We were busy handing out registration packets to new arrivals. I had caught the Al-Anon speaker, Beverly, with whom I also identified, but simply read through the evening’s AA speaker’s name on the schedule without focus. I’d even had a talk with a lady struggling with her alcoholic husband about finding a copy of Sean’s talk. Sean had spoken of when his wife stopped drinking, she noticed he drank. Same situation.

The evening meeting goes through the “ritualistic” openings, the readings and introductions (and the comments by a reader who had a need to be noticed at the podium) and then came the speaker.

Sean talks of arriving at his first AA meeting looking magnificent but smelling like a vodka gimlet. At the moment he said that, I knew it was him. Funny how his talk has changed and now he is divorced though it seemed like his was more amicable than mine. Not that he isn’t feeling exactly as I did, sad and lonely. We do all feel the same you know…

I’d like to say it again, as I did when last night’s meeting ended and I had a chance to shake his hand and tell him thank you. Thanks Sean!

[edited: Download Sean speaking here]

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POSTED IN: Experience, Strength and Hope, Personal