I’m grateful for what happens when I show up and open up. I’m grateful for a gorgeous sunrise. I’m grateful for being shown how wrong I was in such a lovely way. I’m grateful for exactly where I am. I’m grateful to be sober today.
song of the week:
Wow, it was curvy road to the song of the week.1 As I may have mentioned, I was performing official-ish duties in Sin City this week. I had a really great time, re-connected with a lot of people and realized how much I had missed them. It felt like finding another piece of myself and seeing how it fit into the puzzle. Oh, and I ended up standing about 6 feet away from the person with whom I spent the biggest chunk of my “trying to get sober decade.” The person who got me to rehab for the first time (sadly, not the last).
But the important stuff first. I was stalked throughout the week by one song in particular:
I was impatiently waiting to debark my flight and this was the song the airline piped through to try to make this into a pleasant experience. I noticed it, but was more fixated on the idiots in the aisle ahead of me. Then, about 90 minutes later, I was walking through the cavernous hotel I was staying at, and the song played again, and I noticed it again. Then, on Wednesday afternoon, I was in a different cavernous hotel, and it played again, this time I shazam’ed it and it made its way onto the playlist. Then I heard it again on Thursday morning as I waiting impatiently to debark my flight.2
No magic, just a catchy-song. I spent a couple of days working the attendee list and LinkedIn to get a chance to button-hole folks who I surmised might be there. It was a lot of fun and I drank a literal shit-ton of coffee. One of the greatest burdens of being an alcoholic is the shame. I also think feelings of shame are really potent drivers of addictive thinking patterns. Even in sobriety, the idea persists in my head that everyone is still angry at me, that I let everybody down. Those feelings do a pretty good job of convincing me to stay at home and watch YouTube videos about how the world will end. Or the subject of the “Mystery ?? Button.”
Like the famous line, “ no plan survives contact with the enemy,” or Mike Tyson’s slightly better restatement, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face,” these illusions don’t survive contact with reality. I have a confession: I haven’t completed my Ninth Step. I know, I blather on and on about working the Steps, and then I haven’t finished it. My self-justifying view is that like everything else, this is a process that is begun in recovery and then becomes a pillar of life. The Big Book provides a “Plan for Living,” not a weekend of activity.
Anyway, most of the delay would be attributable to fear and perfectionism (more fear, actually). But as I’ve done them, one thing I’ve noticed:
No one is angry.
Also, I think the passage of time lets me see more clearly the exact nature of my wrongs, the way I harmed people who loved me and what might actually be an appropriate amends—for all involved. I’ve been working on one in particular for a while, and a lot lately, because I was pretty sure I was going to bump into her among the nine zillion people swarming those cavernous hotels. It was just a sense I had, I even told friends that it was going to happen. I was right. This person has been discussed before.
It was this person’s ultimatums, that got me to rehab. They just weren’t enough to keep me sober. This person had more to do with my sobriety than just about anyone else and paid a pretty terrible price for it. I feel like I’ve seen glimpses of her over the years, thought I spied her in Central Park a few falls ago, but the idea of encounter provokes profound fear; I have no idea what I would even say.
I’ve been writing a Ninth Step letter for about two years now. No, it doesn’t look like two years worth of work. One of my motivations is that I would really like for her to have read the Ninth Step before we “bump” into each other. Not sure why I feel that way, but would definitely feel awkward about not having done it.
So, I’m walking through the Las Vegas Convention Center, tons of people, tons of gadgets big and small. I’m listening to music and bopping through, not really paying attention to where I’m walking, just meandering through the maze of exhibits and suddenly, I look up and spy the gigantic banner with the name of her organization and think, “oh shit.”
Exhibits are walled off from each other with these dividers, and there happened to be a crack between where two of the dividers came together, allowing me to see into the booth. I could only see part of a cheek, an eye and a nose, but it was pretty un-mistakeably her.
What happened next? Our eyes locked, she flashed a look of complete surprise, seemed to rock back on her heels, then smiled that smile, walked over and hugged me, “I’ve missed you so much.” We walked off to get coffee, both beaming, nervously catching up. Well, actually, it was more like this:
Yeah, I ran away. I had reasons and have even more now. But, at the bottom, there’s still too much fear and I’m not quite ready. Ready for what? I don’t know. It’s this confusing cycle of thinking, the imagining of endless negative outcomes that often keeps me paralyzed, awash in stress, anxiety and indecision. The running away was all instinct and no thought, that’s how I know how deeply the fear runs.
The fear? More facing myself and what happened and what I did. And having to be in the presence of the person to whom a lot of it happened. I guess the feeling I fear is shame. It will be hard to recount the sins, the lies, the deception, the pain and have to hear what it did to her. I also managed to convince myself that it wouldn’t have been a convenient or appropriate time. I may actually be right about that part.
Coming face-to-face with what happened, what we had and what we lost, I just don’t think that should happen on the floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Or at least, I’m just not ready yet. I think part of what I wrote the other day bears on this, part of the acceptance project is accepting my own limitations, understanding, inspecting and honoring my own feelings. Letting things happen instead of aggressively pressing forward.
The fuse is lit now. I don’t know if she saw me, I wasn’t looking over my shoulder as I vectored away. I think I passed between nearby booths and through her line of sight, but whether she saw me? I feel like I’ve learned a couple of things in the last couple of years, the things that are supposed to happen, generally do happen, and the ducking and diving and dodging can only work for a little bit.
I think the song of the week is actually perfect. My life as an alcoholic was filled with shame and rage and fear. That swamp takes a while to drain and I think I need the icky waters to subside a little more. But it was that stew of toxic feelings that kept me running for so long. The problem with running from yourself? It seems like you can never shake that guy.
I’m finishing up the second week of this career I’ve launched in my sixties. I’m not sure when I’ve felt this energized, this happy, this “me.” It’s really an overwhelming set of emotions, my neck sore from all of the head-shaking realizations, but a deep, deep feeling that I’ve reached a place where I’m supposed to be. The things that are happening to me seem magical and absurdly coincidental, but I’ve come to see that’s really how things roll around here. It’s pretty groovy actually and not something that I think I need to run from anymore. The things that are supposed to happen, generally do happen, and mostly when they are supposed to.
Happy Friday.
Also, the “Mystery ?? Button” is something you don’t want to miss. “Luna” is a very fast Dachshund and the announcer just kills this.
The sentence is mostly the same because the “experience” is the same.